ROWING ASSOCIATION’S MISFORTUNE

Evening Star, Issue 21299, 31 December 1932, Page 11

ROWING ASSOCIATION’S MISFORTUNE

EIGHT-OAR BOAT EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED LARRIKINS ATTACK BOATHOUSE Extensive damage has been sustained by one of the Otago Rowing Association’s eight-oar boats, housed;'at the Otago Rowing Club shed on.the upper Harbour waterfront. A hole the size of one’s fist has been made in the nuU of the craft, practically in the centre, near No. 4 seat,, and it was caused by a rock, weighing a pound and a-halr, flung through the skylight; by • some mischievous person or persons,, about 5.30 last evening. . . At the time the trouble occurred there was no one present at the clubhouse, but a man, who made a statement to the police, saw a party of young men nearby. Every pane of glass in the skylight (six in all) was smashed, by stones apparently picked.up off the retaining wall at the rear of the clubhouse, . and it would have taken a powerful person to hurl some of them on to the roof from a distance. Altogether seventy stones were gathered off the roof when members returned. Built of cedar not a quarter of an inch thick, the boat is valued'at more than £l2O, and the repairing will be a master craftsman’s job. It was lying in slings at a fair angle from the skylight, and the stone which did the damage ■ must have performed one or those feats which could scarcely be repeated, and, strangely enough, an old boat, directly under the broken window, was untouched. The Rowing Association owns two of these eights, but only one is kept in the Upper Harbour, the other being placed in the Queens Drive Club’s shed at Port Chalmers.